Thursday, August 2, 2012

It
took two world wars involving the deaths of over 60 million people, millions of
injured and the massive destruction of houses, factories and other buildings to
create the postwar conditions that were to prevail in the West. These
conditions entailed a most peculiar contradictory development of capitalism. These
are one's in which exploitation of the working class itself together with
oppression persisted alongside economic protection by the state and eventually
by emerging unprecedented social liberalism in the West. This peculiar state of
affairs reflects the fragile balance that has persisted for all these years and
which is now coming to an end because of the emerging constraints imposed by
growing objective limitations. What made this epoch so peculiar was this
strategic aspect involving the apparently 'magnanimous' character of Western
capitalism. Now capitalism has no choice. It cannot pursue this strategy any
longer. Growing costs can no longer allow it. This means that the only choice
is capitalism minus these socio-economic frills or world social revolution. Given
these conditions this determined that this strategy could not be indefinitely
sustained. It was merely a provisional strategy.

Modern
western capitalism today presents itself in socially liberal and social welfare
forms giving off the appearance that it solves working class problems. Since
World War Two the growing affluence of the Western working class has been
extending itself so much so that much of this working class has increasingly
lacked any working class identity. Consequently, notwithstanding its negative
character, capitalism has been giving off the appearance of itself as a free,
just and democratic society invested with diversity and even colour. We are
presented with a capitalism that has plausibly realized Gay rights, black
rights, travaller rights, children rights and many other forms of civil and
social rights. In a sense this liberalism is an illusion designed to fool the
masses that they live in a free, just and democratic society capable of capable
further expanding its horizons in those directions.

Generally
in the West individuals, in a quailfied way, are free to express their views
independently of how subversive those views may be. They are even, in a sense,
free to organise themselves against the government. Marxists even become
professors in bourgeois universities. Given that capitalist society is defined
by Marx as inherently oppressive it appears as an inexplicable contradiction
that it should have this free and just character in the West while still
retaining its inherently exploitative and oppressive character. Capitalism's
inherent nature contradicts its plausible appearance. Given these extraordinary
contradictory conditions the present capitalist period has been a most peculiar
one. Modern Western capitalism has largely provided much of what the Left has sought through the ostensibly ultimate
destruction of capitalism --social revolution.

Communism
has been effectively undermined by this strategy of capitalism's. This is why
communism, as a politics and even theory, is virtually non-existent. Communism
can never be successful while this strategy of capitalism's is both sustained
and sustainable. Western Capitalism, in a sense, has stolenradical socialism's clothes. As a result it has
succeeded in the virtual dissipation of potentially dangerous oppositional
forces while achieving the (relative) pacification of the working class. But
the bourgeoisie have paid a big price for this unique, even fragile, balance of
class forces. It is a balance too that has "artificially" tended to
give reformism an extended lease of life. This in turn tends to obstruct the
emergence of a communist movement. Instead its role is replaced, in the main,
by a plethora of reformist political groups, many of which are disguised as
revolutionary(revisionist).

The
bourgeoisie by providing a public sphere within which radical leftism, in its
diverse forms, can exist and even burgeon induces 'the more conscious' elements
within the working class to mistakenly experience capitalism as an acceptably
progressive system merely in need of reforms rather than replacement. The
growing integration of leftist elements into the mass media, academia and the
institutions of the bourgeois state tends to further domesticate their putative
subversive politics. Consequently false consciousness crystallises into a
universal reified ideological formation within the working class. This, in
effect, leads to revisonism/reformism as the key ideology and politics of the
working class.

Complementing
social liberalism is welfarism in the form of social protection and the many
other benefits that are dispensed to the lumpenproletariat and to, perhaps, a
lesser degree the low income strata of the working class. The economic
protection of the lumpenproletariat and the working class appear to protect the
masses from the harsher realities of life. The upshot of this is the insulation
of the masses from class politics and thereby the insulation of capitalism from
communist revolution. Elements within the bourgeoisie benefit from what is
described as “corporate dole” and other forms of support. This helps keep
otherwise disgruntled sections of the bourgeoisie quiet. The farming
bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie receive financial and other support too. This
undertaking by the state helps maintain the cohesiveness of the bourgeoisie. In
a contradictory way capitalist society is emancipated from class struggle and
thereby revolution. Social reality is turned upside down.

Because
of the way in which social welfare is organised and distributed what is, in a
sense, a single comprehensive issue, the issue of communist revolution, is
split into a diverse number of issues. Generally these issues are experienced
as having no necessary connection with each other. Consequently the immediate
conditions for a unified class struggle are conspicuously absent. These
conditions tend to encourge a plethora of single issue campaigns that have no
inner relationship to each other. By splitting the class struggle into a myriad
of atomised single issues its inherent subversiveness suffers. The result is
identity politics and the marginalisation of class struggle. Single issue
campaigners tend to be of the view that individual issues can be realised
within the framework of capitalism. They tend to be indifferent to other
issues, other than their own, even to the point of not envisaging any
relationship between the issues. The splittting of the class struggle into a
multiplicity of issues eviscerates it thereby rendering it ineffectual. This
leads to the political atomization of the working class. It also renders it
easier for the bourgeoisie to confront this atomized working class in a variety
of ways that involves playing one element off against the other.

Formerly
opposition to capitalism had a more challenging and subversive character.
Eventually capital adjusted itself so that it now met much of what this
movement was demanding in a superficially emasculated way. It eviscerated the
demands of "the anti-capitalist" movement by integrating them into
capitalist society. However along with the economic benefits of the social
welfarism they proved enough to pacify the bulk of popular opposition. This
happened time and time again as if it bore law like qualities. This absorption
(defeat) of proletarian opposition assumed a variety of forms. Sections of its
leadership turned into the very "thing" against which it had been
mounting opposition –the bourgeoisie. Another form was the meeting of its
demands in an eviscerated form --expurgated of their substance. The countercultural
movement that began in the 1960s is a classic example of this. There were, and
are, others such as women’s' rights, black civil rights and gay rights movements.
The counterculture involved opposition to many contemporary aspects of
capitalism including U.S. military engagement in Vietnam. Eventually capitalism
managed to undermine this and other movements by conceding to many of its
demands superficially.

Western Capitalism has assumed its current
form as a means of preventing popular opposition from mounting an effective
challenge against it. This was achieved by the transformation of sections of
working class leadership into bourgeois institutional forms while superficially
meeting the popular opposition's demands in a formal way. Initially the
opposition appeared to have a more authentically subversive form. Its social
welfare policy is a device to keep the working class down while posing as an
emancipatory agent. Capitalism in presenting itself as the pioneer of freedom,
reason and justice is, essentially, it’s very opposite. This renders it
increasingly more difficult to convincingly expose the system and mobilise
popular support for communism.

However
given the acutely contradictory character of this strategy it has been
increasingly bumping up against capitalism's objective limits --the growing
tendency of the general rate of profit to fall. The financial and economic
crash in 2008 is an acute expression of this growing tendency. Its aftermath
has led to inroads having to be made on living standards and conditions of the
working class. As the contradictions and objective limits of this historic
strategy become increasingly acute social protective measures will have to be
atrophied if chaos or social revolution are not to ensue. This socio-economic
liberal strategy has become, let me say, too costly. Conditions have been
reaching the stage whereby all round cutbacks are becoming increasingly
necessary if capitalism is to sustain itself. Capitalism now faces a structural
as opposed to a conjunctural crisis. However there is no guarantee that the
capitalist class can successfully free itself from its social welfare character
in order to avoid revolution.

Under modern capitalism human needs
are met in a trivial, unbalanced formal way. These needs are presented as a
common popular good conveying the impression that all people are essentially
the same and desire the same thing --the market as abstract equaliser. It is,
in one form or another, believed to be the sole form by which human needs today
can be satisfied. Our behaviour then is conceived as identical for every member
of the human species. Behaviour "can be recorded on some central data
base." Consequently all humans "have to do to understand how they should
behave is to log onto this data base. Given this, human individuals have no
hope "of experiencing individual needs, creativity, adventure and
innovation." It is this that constitutes the qualitative and significant
gap obtaining between any form of capitalism and communist society. It is this
gap that cannot be filled no matter what social appearances capitalism throws
up. It is intended as a device to deceive and prevent the abolition of
capitalism. It is an illusion that envelopes the Western masses. Whereas individual
needs are an end in themselves. It is this that only communist society can
fulfill. Capitalist success in creating popular satisfaction with such an
arrangement is a clear indication that the masses have been pacified and
thereby turned into a subject populace. Under such conditions it can never
mount a challenge to capitalism. Consequently under these conditions a
communist movement can never exist.